After I left Harmelen four years ago, I also stopped participating in youth activities. Of course I have done some work for Fimcap as their webmaster, but I never visited or participated in any activity.
Last weekend we went to Vall d’Aran to spend 24 hours in a Roundabout camp.
Roundabout is a Fimcap project in which two groups from different countries spend their summer camp together. This Roundabout was between three groups (Germany, Malta and Catalonia), and this was the third year of the project. Since we knew the Maltese animators and most of the German animators very well, we visited them to meet our old friends again.
Because the group had been together for already a week and the participants knew each other from former years, we decided to stay on the background to not disturb the group dynamics. That gave us many possibilities to analyse the activity, and compare it to our own experiences. People active within a youth organisation already know that there are huge differences between groups within a single organisation, let alone the differences between different organisations from different countries — this is one reason Fimcap is so interesting.
Anyway, the atmosphere was very relaxed, and everybody was enjoying the activity. And we? We were very happy to meet our old friends again, and get up-to-date with all the gossip.
